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Re: How to

We installed some last week. We saw a swarm in a tree and set our hive up under it. I set one box on the bottom board and removed a few bars. I knocked the bees down in a bucket and then poured them into the box. The swarm was pretty good size, so I added another box. We'll remove it later once we see how and where the bees start. Then we put on the quilt, filled it with cedar shavings, and put on the roof. They seem happy so far. We'll give them a quick peek this afternoon.

We direct-release our queens when we buy packages. In this case, we'd pour the bees into the hive, open the queen cage and let her out down in the opening.

Here are a few pictures. Hit the link and scroll down the page to get to them.

Re: How to

If you have fixed bars .... an upside down box will work as a funnel to pour the bees into. I remove the upside down box a few days later. I've never had them start building against the exposed quilt while the upside down box was there.